


Pyrophyte

by OmgReally



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Big Mando Hands, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin catches feels, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force-Sensitive Reader, Hurt/Comfort, Literally a Slow Burn in Chapter 1, Lots of Touching, Mando is Broad, Mando to the Rescue, Mutual Pining, Mysterious Pasts Galore, POV Din Djarin, POV Second Person, Post-Season/Series 02, Present Tense, Protective Din Djarin, Reader needs a hug too, Reader-Insert, Sad Din Djarin, Scary Din Djarin, Sexual Tension, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved Din Djarin, tw: burns and burn treatment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:34:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OmgReally/pseuds/OmgReally
Summary: On a backwards planet in a lonely corner of the galaxy, you live and toil for a people who probably don't even know what the firmament of space looks like outside the shelter of trees and roof. You're not even surprised when they turn on you and sentence you to death for your arcane, otherworldly knowledge of...plants.And then a Mandalorian shows up, and you go from the frying pan into a fire of a different kind.A story of how the Mandalorian saves a girl, and she saves him back.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You, The Mandalorian/Reader
Comments: 104
Kudos: 262





	1. The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Throwing my hat into the Din/Reader ring with an idea that just wouldn't leave me alone. We'll see how this goes, I g _u e s s_?
> 
> Content and potential trigger warning: Fire and fire-inflicted burns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Pyrophyte** _, n  
>  lit. _'fire plant' _, Any plant that is resistant to fire, or that needs fire to propagate_

The rough hemp rope digs into your wrists, rubbing the skin raw when you dare to move your bound hands. You try not to, but the bindings are so tight that your fingers are tingling, numb from the lack of circulation.

It’s funny - even now, all you can think of as you’re dragged forward, slipping and stumbling in the mud, are your plants. Your flowers, your herbs, your little garden out behind your home just outside the edge of town. Your cat. Who will take care of him when you’re gone?

It’s an odd thing to think about when you’re about to be burned to death.

The villagers jeer and curse, heaping abuse and spit upon you as you are dragged past. You keep your head down, your chin tucked to your chest, trying to present a smaller target. You suppose you should just be grateful they’re not throwing stones or rotten vegetables - but this town has little enough of the latter to spare. 

You are lucky your garden has been doing so well. You’ve kept the village children fed with what you can’t eat from your vegetable patch, and you treat the women who come to you sick and bleeding, and sometimes the men, too. But as mouths tend to do, they talk, and they spoke too much to the wrong people of the strange, wild woman in the woods whose touch can revive any plant, who brews strange potions and concoctions from the strange-smelling herbs she grows, whose only companion is an elderly Tooka cat that she talks to as if it is a person.

Eventually they visited you, one of the eldermen and the town guard, with suspicious eyes and harsh words and demands. They tore through your hut, upending containers of carefully-curated ingredients, dried plants, powdered roots, unguents and emollients of precious medicines that took months to formulate - tossed, smashing them on the floorboards. When one man became sick after touching a highly-potent salve meant to treat pain in very small doses, they returned, and this time, they came with weapons.

You expected this, in a way, eventually. This town has long been the enemy of progress, tucked away on a planet without a spaceport at the very edge of the Outer Rim. The people here can’t fathom anything that lies outside their own doorstep, let alone anything beyond their own understanding.

So they bind you, and they throw you in a hole, and they tell you the next morning you’ve been sentenced to death. To burn.

And all you can think about are your plants.

\---

They tie you to a hastily-erected stake. It’s just a skinny tree trunk, bleeding sap where the branches have been hacked off, shoved into the ground. What dry tinder and wood they could find is piled around its base. You find the little stool they stand you on hilarious - and there is fear in the eyes of the executioner as you giggle while he yanks your arms above your head and ties them to the stake.

“Quiet, devil woman!” he hisses, and when you smile at him, trying for kindness, he slaps you so hard your ears ring and you can taste the heavy tang of blood in your mouth. By the time you can open your eyes again, he’s tying a rope around your waist, swearing and muttering under his breath.

“You don’t have to do this,” you tell him gently. His eyes don’t meet yours. “I help people. You can too. Please.”

You don’t expect your appeal to work. He raises his hand to slap you again, and you cringe back, but something stops him. He’s glimpsed the glimmer of precious metal at your breast, and you cry out as he tears your shirt open and grabs the necklace from its spot nestled against your sternum.

When he makes out the shape cast in the metal, he drops it as if he’s burned himself, his hand shaking. “Symbol of the devil,” he whispers, and you think you can see flames reflected in his eyes as he backs away. “Bring the torches!”

You wish you _were_ a witch. Maybe then, you could magic yourself out of this situation. You close your eyes as the senior elderman hands the executioner and the other guards torches and they advance on your makeshift pyre. 

You can feel the heat as they approach. You try for that space inside you, where all is safe and tranquil, the place you go while you tend your garden, while you feel the soil beneath your fingers, teeming with life. But you cannot reach it now. 

You will die here. Alone. Vilified. Every bit of good you have done erased by the suspicion and mistrust of a people you have cared for, whose ailing mothers’ bedsides you have sat beside, whose babies you helped deliver, whose hungry children you have fed.

And there is nothing you can do or say to change it.

They light the sticks and kindling at your feet, and you can feel the flames as they crackle and lick upward, seeking more fodder to burn, catching the thicker logs stacked near your legs. Such a waste of wood, you think. Such a waste.

You can hear the villagers as they watch, cheering on the fire as if it is a living thing, cheering for your death. You think you might recognize some of them if you open your eyes, so you do not.

You keep your lips clamped tightly shut against the sobs and whimpers that are building in your chest, even as hot tears slip down your cheeks. You don't even care that your shirt is gone, that you are bare to them as you burn. As it grows hotter, sweat has gathered on your bare chest, at the back of your neck; your hair sticks to your forehead and to the blood trickling from your mouth as you begin to squirm, fighting against the ache in your overstretched arms.

All that does is kick the stool out from under you, and you sob out a cry as you hang suspended from the ropes binding your wrists above you and around your waist. You can make out words now - “Burn, demon! Die, fiend!” - as the villagers watch and shriek with dark, fierce joy.

So, you think. This is how it ends.

Then, as you begin to choke and sputter on the smoke and the flames catch your boot and lick upward, the screams change into a song of fear and terror. You can hear feet pounding the muddy ground, yelling, and the impact of metal on flesh. And then, something you never thought you would hear again in your lifetime -

The sound of blaster fire.

You open your eyes and instantly regret it - the smoke stings, burning your lips and tongue and the inside of your nose, and you are instantly blinded by tears. You try to blink them away, coughing, kicking madly as your boot continues to burn. You manage to kick it off and away, but your skirt dangles precariously close to the fire as it roars all around you, and you can feel its heat searing, bubbling the skin on the outsides of your bare arms and chest.

Still, you crane your neck, looking towards the sounds, and through the blurriness of your vision you see the battle. All of the guards, the eldermen, are fighting with their spears and their swords, beating back an enemy you cannot see. You think there must be dozens of them, for as you watch, they fall one by one, screaming, hit by blaster fire, by flame, by impacts you cannot see.

You cry out, screaming for them as much as for yourself as you burn. You can’t tell where the flames are for they are everywhere now, in front of you, behind. Your hands are numb and slick with blood and sweat as you dangle from your wrists, and you hope shock will take you soon and blank all your perception. 

Before your eyes slip closed for the last time, you see it. The attackers. Or, more accurately, the _attacker_ , for there is only one.

He - you think it is a he - is tall, clad in silver armor, armed with a blaster in one hand and a tall spear in the other. His face is hidden behind a mask - no, not a mask, a helmet, and the flames are reflected in the darkness of his visor as he approaches, each step heavy, assured. 

You must be dreaming, delirious or dead, for he cannot be what you think he is.

He sweeps back the last of the guards with his spear and shoots the last man almost in the same moment. It’s the executioner himself; he charges the armored figure, screaming defiance, cut off by a single shot and a gurgle. He falls to the ground and does not get up again.

The armored man steps over his body, drawing closer. When he points his blaster at you, you do not feel fear, but relief. The pain is so great that a swift end sounds like heaven - but the barrel of the gun lifts, he squeezes the trigger, and you hear rather than feel the blaster bolt hit the stake above you. Your arms fall suddenly, released from their bonds, and you sag heavily at the waist, supported only by the fraying rope there as it strains towards snapping.

In front of you is an inferno, beckoning you towards immolation, and it is the only place you can go. But before you can fall, you hear a sound like the muted roar of an engine and suddenly there is an arm around you, a strong, metal-clad arm, and you’re lifted up, up, _up -_

The fire recedes, and from above you can see that it’s escaped your pyre and is spreading through the brush, towards the streets and houses of the town. You hear screaming, you see them scrambling to get away, and you close your eyes against the suffering, your heart aching with every tortuous beat in the depths of your chest.

Some time later, you’re not sure how long exactly, the ground is beneath you again. The arm lets you go, and you pitch forward, coughing and hacking until you vomit, but at last you can breathe. You lie on your side in the dirt, blood and ash and bile thick on your tongue, and the soil is cool beneath you, cool and soothing against your scorched skin.

“Are you alive?” The voice sounds strange, not muffled as it should be from underneath a helmet, but passed through a filter, slightly compressed. Unfamiliar, but not alien.

You don’t respond. Your throat hurts, scorched by the smoke. Your arms and chest burn with searing pain, but it keeps you awake, away from the oblivion that threatens to swallow you whole. Before, you would have welcomed it, but now you cling to the consuming agony of life, digging your fingers into the dirt and inhaling raggedly.

“Hey. Girl. _Girl_.” You feel a boot nudge your side and you groan brokenly. “Dank _farrik_.” The filtered voice sounds frustrated, now, and you wonder if he has changed his mind and has decided to kill you after all - but instead, you feel something heavy settle over your singed shoulders, rough fabric wrapping around you, and you gasp as you’re lifted up into his arms again.

“Can’t leave you here like this,” the modulated voice mutters. Every jolt of your body as he walks sends a bolt of pain through you, but you embrace it, letting your head fall back, your eyes cracking open one last time so that you might look up and see him.

You think you are definitely hallucinating, or dead after all, for the figure you saw in the flames is exactly what you thought it was.

Your rescuer is a Mandalorian.


	2. The Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After almost dying, you meet your rescuer face-to-face. Well...face-to-helmet. 
> 
> The Mandalorian is kinder than you expected and as mysterious as you feared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content/Trigger Warning: Detailed descriptions of burn injuries and treatment of said burn injuries.

You regain consciousness slowly, reluctantly, without ever realizing you’d lost it. But there’s the feeling that some time has passed, and the dryness of your cracked lips, the stiffness in your limbs tells you you haven’t moved in a while.

Memory is slow to assert itself, and you’re glad of that, for when it comes it is comprised of flame, of blood, of the sounds of screaming and the smell of your own charred flesh. 

You expect to be in more pain than you actually are. In fact, you expect agony. You have seen burns as deep as yours only once before, when there was a house fire in the village. A woman fell asleep while cooking for her husband, and the curtains caught flame; it spread through every room before she woke. She got the babies out, but in the process she was terribly, awfully injured. When you first took the makeshift bandages off her leg, several layers of her skin came with it.

And yet, you feel...intact. Oh, it hurts, _yes_ , but not nearly as much as you thought it would. Perhaps it’s shock, you think; perhaps it _is_ much worse than you think and your limbs have been incinerated entirely, and it’s just the phantom ghosts of your arms and legs that you move as you stir, groaning.

Then you open your eyes.

You are lying on a swathe of fabric on a hard, metal floor; the wall is metal, the ceiling is metal. The man crouched at your side is metal. That’s when you remember him - the Mandalorian. Striding like judgment personified into the village with blaster and spear at the ready, striking down the wicked and innocent alike. You shudder, but you’re not sure if he notices. You’re not sure of anything behind that visor.

He’s doing something with his hands, you realize, and that’s when you feel it - the cool, soothing sweep of fingers that are not your own across your arms, your bare chest. You realize you are still uncovered, bare from the waist up, your blouse in shredded, carbonized tatters, but covering your modesty is in the forefront of your mind right now. The burns are all over your upper chest, your shoulders, even your ribs, and the Mandalorian is rubbing a thick, gooey substance into your skin, into the burns. Wherever it touches, the pain fades from an urgent sting to a dull ache, and it makes you sigh in relief.

“Is that nysillin?” you murmur. You’re surprised you can speak; even your throat feels better, although your voice is thin and cracked. 

The Mandalorian’s helm tilts slightly as he looks down at you. “Bacta gel,” he says, in that filtered voice of his. You make a soft sound of surprise - bacta is unheard of in a place like this.

But then again, so are Mandalorians.

For a while, you drift, half-conscious, letting him spread the salve over your scorched skin. Eventually his hand leaves you, and to your surprise, he covers you, rough fabric coming to rest just lightly across your breasts as the gel sinks in. You let yourself close your eyes - just for a moment, you tell yourself. Just a moment.

The Mandalorian is gone the next time you wake, but to your surprise and joy, you can feel your fingers again. They hurt, like the rest of you hurts, but you can move through it, and though it tears a groan that sounds like a wounded animal from your throat, you force yourself to get an arm under you and lever yourself up to sit.

The fabric covering you looks like a cloak, well-worn, holes patched by an experienced hand. It’s rough and itchy, and you lift it away to inspect the damage to your body. To your surprise, it’s more like a fresh sunburn, the skin pink and shiny and new, describing strange whorls and patterns across the flesh of your collarbones, your sternum, your left breast and your ribs. It stings to touch, but it’s intact. _You_ are intact.

You are alive.

The realization hits you with the force of a slap to the face or a bucket of ice-water upended over your shoulders, and you gasp aloud with it. You are alive. You survived the pyre, the ones that tried to immolate you instead lie dead or dying in the mud, and _you are alive_.

It should not devastate you as much as it does.

The sobs wrack your whole body, tearing through you and leaving you desolate in the wake of your grief. You’re not sure how long you sit there and cry, curled in on yourself, but it doesn’t subside until all your energy has left you and you are a dried-up husk with no more tears to give. Then, the sobs gradually subside to hiccups, your head aching, your eyes pounding with dehydration.

You force yourself to breathe, long and slow into your singed lungs. It hurts, but it steadies you, the flow of oxygen through your system calming the frantic, parched beating of your desiccated heart. Eventually, you are calm and can see again, although your eyes feel swollen and your lips are split and bleeding from the force of your sobs.

“Here. Drink.” You’re not sure how long the Mandalorian has been there - maybe the whole time you were crying and snotting all over yourself like a newborn babe. You don’t care. Especially not when he presses a container of water into your hand.

“ _S_ _lowly_ ,” he adds as you lift it to your lips and upend it too quick; you choke on the first attempt, coughing and sputtering water all over yourself. You take his advice with the next one, tipping the flask back slower this time, taking an aggravatingly careful sip. The water floods your mouth, pure and clean, washing away the ash and blood, and it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted.

“Thank you,” you manage, in between longer sips. You see the helmet dip in a nod of acknowledgment. It’s so strange, sitting across from a _Mandalorian_ \- much less a Mandalorian that saved your life.

He takes the flask away before you get a chance to finish it, shaking his head as you mumble objections. “Not too much,” he says. “You’ll throw up.” You watch him as he stands, moving to a crate lashed to the wall, perching on its edge. That’s when your brain finally begins to work.

Crates, secured to the wall by cargo netting. Metal deck below you. Metal bulkheads around you. _You’re on a spaceship_.

You have not seen a ship on this planet in a very, very long time. 

“Is this - your ship?” you ask haltingly, wishing for more of the water, but he’s right. Your stomach is fighting the sudden influx of liquid and you swallow back a surge of nausea, determined to keep it down.

“Yes,” the Mandalorian says simply. He does not elaborate.

“Why…” This question is harder, and not just because it hurts to speak. You wet your lips, glad for the saliva instead of acid in your mouth. “Why did you save me?”

He sighs, his metal shoulders rising and falling with the force of it. You see a symbol on his right pauldron, a horned creature you almost recognize, and you fixate on that instead of the bandolier of ammo across his chest, the explosive charges on his belt, the blaster in its holster resting against his outer thigh. He is a warrior. But then, all Mandalorians are.

“I didn’t intend to,” he says, his modulated voice unpadded by any faux-apologetic tone, any sympathy or softness - it’s just cold, hard fact, framed by steel. Beskar steel, it’s called. You remember. “I came to this planet for...a job." He makes a sound that's somewhere in between the inhalation of breath and a chuckle. "Didn’t expect to find an actual witch hunt.”

“They finished their hunt,” you reply, not trying for bitterness but finding it nonetheless. It’s not their fault, you tell yourself. It’s not their fault. “They found their witch. Tried, sentenced and condemned. All that was left was the burning.”

You expect him to ask you about it. To ask what you did, who you are. But he doesn’t. He just shrugs.

“Need to apply more bacta in another couple of hours,” he says. “You should try not to move too much.”

He stands and moves away, towards a ladder leading up to another deck. But before he can reach for the rungs, you call out - “Wait.”

He stops and turns to you again, head tilted. It’s strange, that helmet, almost oddly expressive. You feel as if you are talking to the helmet itself instead of the face that no doubt lies beneath it.

Probably.

You hesitate. “What do I call you?”

The Mandalorian pauses, and you’re not sure if he’s surprised or just considering his answer. Then he says, “Mando. Call me Mando,” and he grabs onto the rungs before you can respond, hauling himself up and out of your line of sight.

“Mando.” You shrug to yourself, turning to eye the flask of water he left on top of the crate. “It suits you.” 

You wrap the refashioned cloak around your torso, tucking it in at the edge so that it stays put. It scrapes against your skin, but it’s better than crawling around the ship topless. You’ve lost a boot, you remember, and your leg is burned as well, but it feels like Mando has applied bacta there too. You’re sore but grateful as you drag yourself across the floor, inch by aching inch, until at last you rest against the crates, panting from the exertion for a moment before you scoop up your prize.

The water still tastes just as good, and you fight to keep your sips slow and measured. In between, you continue to take stock of yourself, to assess the damage with a practiced hand.

Your upper arms and elbows are red and shiny with bacta-healed flesh, and your shoulders hurt from your suspension from the stake. Miraculously your hands seem to have escaped any burns, but your wrists are ringed with nasty red welts from the rope. 

As for the rest of you - your skirt is in tatters almost as badly as your blouse, scorched nearly to disintegration, and your surviving boot isn’t much better off. You pull it off, groaning with even this little effort, and toss it away.

Eventually, you touch your neck, and it’s then you realize your pendant is missing. It’s possible it was taken by the fire, or it fell off during your rescue - or perhaps your rescuer himself took it as a down-payment. Either way, you feel its loss more acutely than anything else so far, and you have to steel yourself to keep going.

Your fingers brush across your face, exploring your mouth, your jaw, your cheek. It feels like your head is still ringing with the executioner’s slap, and the skin is tight and swollen with bruising from the blood vessels burst beneath the surface. It will take some time to go down.

Your hair has not come through unscathed, either. Where once it was past your shoulders, it’s been eaten away by the fire. Now, the red locks are somewhere at your chin, uneven and brittle. It’s almost enough to make you start crying again - but if the sight of your own burned, ruined body didn’t make you cry, one more blemish isn’t going to set you back now.

You finish off the water and lean your aching back against the crates, and you’re not sure if it’s the pain or the trauma but you begin to drift off again, your chin lolling against your chest, eyelids flickering as behind them, the flames keep burning.

You jolt awake as a pair of boots hit the deck, forcing your heavy eyelids open. Mando approaches from the ladder, observing your change in position with a tilt of the blank, black visor. 

“Time for more bacta,” he says, holding up a clear blister pack of the thick blue liquid. You nod, swallowing, as he approaches and takes a knee next to you. Very close.

Mandalorians are impressive in their armor, and this one is no exception. You can’t really tell from your position on the floor, but you think he is quite tall, and broad, and the span of his hand covers twice yours. And he radiates danger, every inch of him an advertisement for his aptitude for violence.

Yet here he is, slathering bacta gel on a poor burned peasant girl without complaint. 

“That stuff’s expensive,” you observe, letting him cover your arms and the visible parts of your chest first. He’s still wearing his gloves, you notice, and the variable texture of the leather brushes your sore skin firmly as he massages in the gel. It’s just as refreshingly cold as before, calming the angry red welts as Mando’s hand spreads it thoroughly over each affected spot. He’s diligent, you observe, careful, and much more gentle than you could have expected.

“I’ll get more.”

“Not on this planet,” you say sadly. “This place is at least five hundred years behind the rest of the galaxy.” You reconsider. “Five _thousand_.”

“And you’re not?” He sounds disinterested, but it’s the first question he’s asked you, so you latch onto it.

“I’m not...from here,” you say. And he just nods. Giving you nothing. No opinion, no follow-up. He is a Mando of few words, it seems.

“Lie back,” he says, and you blink in confusion. You think maybe the bacta’s reached your bloodstream and is making it hard for you to keep track of the conversation, your mind too fuzzy to keep up. Mando holds up a gloved hand slathered with gel and gestures at the cloak still wrapped around your torso.

“Take it off.”

_What?_

You’re still too sore, too tired and too overcome by everything that has happened to resist. And he’s just a helmet. This is medicine - you can’t count the numbers of breasts you’ve seen, of other parts, and you treated them all with the same detached manner as the Mandalorian is now.

But still, you’re glad for your fire-flushed skin to hide the blush.

You unwind the cloak from around your body and spread it out flat behind you, lying back onto the deck. And you cover your breasts with an arm. Just in case.

Mando works the gel into the burns over your ribs and sides carefully, methodically, and you feel the pain fade there too. It’s wonderful. His hand crests your sternum, taking away the sting there, and you’re surprised when his glove sweeps up your neck for his fingers to find your mouth.

“Your lips are bleeding,” he tells you, and you nod breathlessly as he spreads a layer of gel across your mouth with the tip of his gloved forefinger. You can see nothing in the dark T of his visor save for the reflection of your own face. Singed, swollen, helplessly broken. Nothing to look at, really. He’s just being thorough.

His palm cups your cheek, and the gel sinks into your swollen, bruising jaw. Your eyes flutter closed with a sigh. The bacta is definitely in your bloodstream now and you feel tired, untethered from reality. 

Mando’s hand is gone, too quickly, and you feel its absence keenly. “You...would make a great healer,” you mumble, the bacta making your lips tingle as the split skin knits back together. 

“I’m going to move you off the floor, okay?” he says, not waiting for an answer before his arms are around you again. He lifts you as if you’re light as a feather, and you feel the cold press of his Beskar against your skin. It’s not entirely unpleasant.

Mando carries you to a sleeping berth set back into the wall. He lays you down on the cot inside and hands you the cloak again to cover yourself with. Then, from a recess in the bulkhead, he withdraws a shirt - one of his, you think, for it matches the dark, heavy padded clothing that he wears underneath his armor. He lays it next to you.

“Put this on when you’re feeling up to it. I want my cloak back.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, watching him through half-lidded eyes as the bacta does its work. “Thank you...Mando.”

He pauses, outlined by the opened hatch, one arm braced above him as he peers in on you. “You’re welcome,” he says, and then he moves away, his steps surprisingly silent on the deck.

The space smells like him, like gun oil and ozone, a subtler scent than burnt hair and flesh but present nonetheless - and far more pleasant. You breathe it in as you let your muscles relax and close your eyes, giving in to the buzz of bacta working its way through you subcutaneously.

You dream of a fire you cannot see as it consumes you from the ground up, and you feel every lick of flame, every hiss and sizzle as the oils and fats in your body burst and split your skin, every crackle as it cooks you down to your bones until you are nothing but ash, blown away on the wind.

And you can’t open your mouth to scream.


	3. The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You sleep, you wake, you sleep again, and you continue to heal from your injuries.
> 
> All the while the Mandalorian wonders if he hasn't made another mistake that might cost him more than he's prepared to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader has a name! Lmk if you guys like it. Mando will most likely just be referring to her as The Girl anyway as I'm fairly certain that's unofficial canon at this point.

The Mandalorian is not sure why this keeps happening to him.

He sits in the cockpit of his borrowed ship, turning the tracking fob over in his fingers. He didn’t lie to the girl. He _is_ here on a job. It’s the perfect planet to lie low, to offer any criminal or quarry a hiding place should they find a bounty hunter on their tail.

Unless the bounty hunter is a Mandalorian, of course.

However, when he had walked into the village, the fob beeping urgently from his belt, he had not expected the townsfolk to attack him. The atmosphere was charged with bloodlust and embers clouded the air, and in the shifting shadows from the fire there had been no time to do anything except react.

This is what he gets for expecting things to be _easy_.

After - after Gideon’s ship, after Bo-Katan’s refusal to take the darksaber, after - everything, Mando returned to what he did best. He had lost his ship, after all, and everything on it. It has taken him time to rebuild, despite the ever-present, inevitable shadow of a reckoning he will do anything to avoid. It is busywork, he knows, work he is doing to distract himself from the inescapable.

He never used to believe in destiny. Not until he met - 

Anyway. He’s not sure why things have to be so _complicated_.

You are a complication, no doubt about that. He couldn’t just leave you like that, semi-conscious and half-burned to death. He just - he couldn’t. So he rescued you, and now he has you, a peasant girl slathered in bacta dozing in his bunk.

He tells himself he does not care who you are, what you did to get yourself strung up on that stake and set alight by a village of drooling backwater _di’kut_ s. He tells himself he will not ask. He tells himself he’ll wait ‘til you’re strong enoughand then he'll drop you off back home.

If you even have a home any more.

“Dank farrik,” Mando sighs to himself, tossing the tracking fob onto the control panel in front of him. He pushes himself to his feet and heads to the ladder down to the hold, regret and doubt dogging his every step.

But then again, _that_ is nothing new. Only the cause of it is.

\---

This ship has a similar layout to the _Crest_ , although it’s bigger, newer, and he hates it. He misses the patina of age on every bulkhead, the creak of his old chair, the squeak and rattle of the engines. This one is too silent, too smooth, too _spacious_.

He doesn’t deserve it.

You are still asleep when Mando drops into the hold, and you don’t even stir when he approaches the sleeping berth, although he's making no attempt to be stealthy about it. He peers down at you through the visor, watching for the measured rise-and-fall of your chest, observing the progress of the healing burns visible beneath the borrowed cloak. It’s not as bad as he first feared, and you’re adapting well to the bacta gel. You’d do better in a tank, but out here, basic first aid has to do.

Something you said makes him wonder. _Is that nysillin?_ A common healing herb grown in various parts of the galaxy, it’s still not something he’d expect a rustic small-town girl to know about. He tries not to get curious, but he’s fairly certain you’re not just some farm girl the village decided to set on fire for fun.

Mando sighs again. You’re definitely going to be trouble. He knew it as soon as he laid eyes on you through the roaring flames of the fire. And yet, here you are.

He turns and leaves you to sleep.

\---

You wake feeling better than the last couple of times you managed to claw yourself back to consciousness. Your skin aches and feels pulled taut over your bones, so that when you move, it tugs at you in awkward places, like clothes that don’t fit properly. You want to stretch, but you fight against the urge, instead moving slowly and gingerly as you open your eyes and sit up.

Memory is quicker to assert itself this time as you take in your surroundings, the bunk, the cloak covering you, Mando’s shirt next to you. You move to tug it over your head, hissing as the movement makes pain spark in your shoulder joints and in the healing skin of your arms, but you manage it without injuring yourself, at least. 

The shirt is really more of a vest, padded through the chest, abdomen and back, and it’s too big for you, but the looseness of the fabric is appreciated since it doesn’t rub your raw skin too much. You wonder if Mando thought of that when he gave it to you. 

When you touch your lips, they feel smooth, unblemished, and the swelling on your face has gone down, too. _Like magic_ , you think, not without a hint of irony. The bacta has done its work well. 

You are suddenly, violently thirsty, and the tiny cabin is empty save for bric-a-brac stuffed into alcoves in the bulkhead and the bed itself, with no Mandalorian in sight. You’re going to have to seek out water - and the refresher - on your own. 

At first, it seems like a daunting task, but the more you move the better you feel. You swing your bare feet off the bunk first, pause to let the dizzying spin of your world settle, then ease yourself up to stand, wobbling a little and bracing a hand on the bulkhead in front of you. Then, slowly and gradually, you move out into the ship proper.

Your steps, similar to your healing skin, feel like a newborn babe’s, sending you tilting alarmingly on muscle groups that refuse to expand and contract the way they should. You wonder how long you’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness, how long you’ve been on this ship, recovering - the stiff shake in your limbs tell you it’s been a while.

You find the refresher bay after some fumbling around. You almost knock into the crates which, to your surprise, feel empty, shifting as your shoulder impacts them. You wince, but no Mandalorian appears to tell you off, so you slip into the refresher bay and shut the hatch behind you.

You’re relieved to find everything inside working. When you’re done, you splash water onto your face from the sink, washing away the soot and grime and dried blood, and it feels heavenly.

Before you leave, you catch sight of yourself in the mirror above the sink and gasp. You don’t look familiar at all. Your hair, seared off to your chin, is streaked with ash so that the red locks are stained a muddy brown, your face is puffy and discolored, and your eyes are hooded and haunted by deep shadows that sink them right back into their sockets. You look like someone else, or like a phantom inhabiting your own body. It’s...disquieting, to say the very least.

You keep your eyes averted as you bring mouthfuls of water to your lips, drinking it down hurriedly from the cup made by your palms. When you’ve had your fill, which seems to take quite a while, you dry your hands against the tattered fabric of your skirt and turn to leave your reflection behind.

When you open the hatch and step out, you nearly run face-first into a solid wall of Beskar.

You yelp in surprise, nearly rebounding off the Mandalorian, and he catches you with gloved hands at your elbows to steady you. You gaze up, up, _up_ into that expressionless visor, but there's something in the tilt of his head that seems... _amused_ as he looks down at you.

“You’re awake,” he observes. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve felt better,” you say. He’s still not letting your arms go, but you find that - oddly enough - you don’t mind. “All things considered, I’m a lot better than I have any right to feel.”

“Yes,” he says. His hand tightens on your elbow slightly and you realize he’s trying to move your arm to get a better look at the burns. You force yourself to relax, allowing him to tilt your forearm this way and that. “Hmm. I’ve got one more bacta pack left. After that, this might not even leave a scar.” His thumb brushes the inside of your wrist, and despite the sting, you shiver. 

He’s so effortlessly threatening that it should be terrifying. After the pyre, though, you don’t think you’ll be able to find anything else quite so terrifying again.

“What’s your name?” he asks, letting you go. You release a breath you weren’t aware you were holding.

“Pyrrha,” you say. “Pyrrha Vantis.” As if it’s significant at all, as if it matters - you’re fairly sure he’s just asking out of perfunctory politeness. 

A Mandalorian with manners - will miracles never cease?

“You said you weren’t from here. Is there anywhere else you can go?” The question is casual, but something about his tone is not. It’s careful, measured, and it feels like he’s watching your reaction closely. 

Your blood, so recently warmed, runs cold. “Why?”

The Mandalorian shrugs those great, armored shoulders of his. “Just in case.”

“In case - what?” 

The helmet regards you blankly; impassive, expressionless. But you think his voice is gentler than before, coming out soft from the vocabulator: “In case you weren’t the only thing your people decided to burn.”

You feel sick. You think of your house, your plants, your old Tooka cat. 

Surely the eldermen, the villagers wouldn’t be so foolish - surely they would see the value of the vegetable garden, even if they don’t understand the herbs and medicines. Surely they wouldn’t destroy it out of fear and spite. 

Like they tried to destroy _you_.

“I looked after them,” you say dully. “For years. I helped their sick, their wounded, their starving. I never asked for anything in return.” You feel like all the tears, the grief has already been wrung from you, leaving you a harrowed shell, as capable of emotion as the tower of Beskar before you. You do not cry.

And he says nothing.

“I have to go back,” you tell him, shaking your head. You lurch past him, your gaze sweeping the bulkheads, looking for an exit. “I need to-”

“Woah, woah.” His gloved hand is on your shoulder, heavy, painful as it squeezes where you’re burned. He seems to remember, shifting his grip to your forearm again, anchoring you in place with the durasteel strength of his fingers. “You’re not going anywhere.” He pauses a beat, then you hear a sigh that’s beginning to become familiar. “Not alone.”

“You’ll come with me?” You turn to him, your face betraying your shock. As far as you recall, Mandalorians aren’t known for their charity. Perhaps he’s hoping you’ll have something valuable in that hut of yours - but you have nothing. Just herbs, medicines and food.

Though, judging from those empty crates, maybe he could use some of it.

“Yes.” He lets you go when he’s sure you’re not going to bolt, and nods. “But not yet. You still need to rest.” You open your mouth to protest, but you’re arrested by his hand on you again. He touches your waist, nudging you back towards the bunk. “We’ll leave at first light.”

“Okay,” you say, stepping obediently towards the sleeping berth. “But what about-”

When you turn, Mando’s already gone, but you catch a glimpse of his boots as they retreat up the ladder.

You sit gingerly on the edge of the cot, letting the ache of exhaustion wrap your bones in the renewed awareness of gravity. It drags you down, down, down, until you’re pillowed in it, surrounded by the absoluteness of oblivion.

And, eventually, you sleep.


	4. The Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mandalorian accompanies you to your home. Or, rather, what's left of it. 
> 
> With nowhere else to go, he makes you an offer. One you might live to regret.

Your house is gone.

It’s been reduced to a charred, burned-out husk, only a few support beams remaining, and the roof has caved in on itself. What's left of the structure stands like a blackened skeleton against the pale dawn sky, carbonized metacarpals stretching in supplication towards the unknown heavens. 

That wouldn’t upset you so much if it wasn’t for what’s surrounding it:

Nothing.

Your garden is gone, the plants all torn up, burned where they could, stomped into the mud where they couldn’t. The vegetables, the food; gone. The herbs and plants; gone. The flowers; gone. It’s just a mass of dirt and ash now, and it feels like a grave.

Your grave.

You walk numbly through the still-smoking cinders of your home, borrowed boots that are far too big for you slipping on the debris of your torched life. You crouch down and sift some of it through your fingers. It’s just ash, blowing away on the wind. You can’t even tell what it used to be.

“I’m sorry.” The Mandalorian’s voice, modulated by his helmet’s vocoder, murmurs behind you. His sympathy slides off you, failing to sink in anywhere that matters. You are anesthetized to it.

You have never said a bad word about the villagers and townsfolk in all these years. Not aloud. Perhaps you have thought it, in moments of frustration, while you were up to your elbows in blood and bodily fluids and exhaustion. But you have never let them _see_. 

Not until now, when they are all gone. Everything is gone.

“Idiots!” You yell it to the sky, rising to your feet and kicking a mound of charred detritus as hard as you can. The boot passes right through it, and you almost lose your footing, caught again by Mando’s hand on your arm. You shake him off, breathing hard as you turn away, anger and grief warring for space inside your twisted, straining sternum, where a scream threatens to break through the dam of exhaustion. You fall to your knees instead.

“Idiots,” you whisper. “Clodhoppers, parochial barbarians. Dust-for-brains. How could they do this?”

“You grew food for them.” The Mandalorian’s boot enters your peripheral vision, nudging through a mess of dessicated leaves. He needn’t bother. You know without needing to look that there is nothing salvageable. “They destroyed it all.”

“Like you said,” you reply flatly, "I’m not the only thing they decided to burn.”

You bring a shaking hand up to your face, covering your eyes for a moment. There is nothing left, within you or without. There is only ash and dust.

Eventually, you rise to your feet, brushing off the remains of your skirt. You turn to Mando, lifting your eyes to his visor. “Thank you,” you say dully. “For saving me. And for the boots.”

The great silver shoulders shrug, the helmet offers a tilt of acknowledgment. “You’re welcome.”

You think that will be the end of it, that he will walk away and leave you here in the ruins of your life. He has no obligation to do otherwise. And although this Mandalorian has shown an odd propensity for kindness, you do not expect his hesitation.

“What are you going to do now?” he asks, placing his hands on his hips as he surveys the remains of your only home with a sweep of his visor. 

This time, it is your turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe some seeds survived. I’ll- I’ll gather those, and I suppose I’ll travel to the next town…” And hope nobody from this one follows you.

Mando seems to be thinking the same thing. His gaze is directed west, back towards the village, where smoke rises, a great black plume on the horizon. 

“I can drop you off wherever you need to go.”

You blink, not sure you heard him right. “What?” 

The helmet swivels to fix its full attention on you, and you swallow around the sudden lump in your throat.

“I can drop you off wherever you need to go,” he repeats. “The next town, if you want. The next planet.”

“But - “ Your mind whirls with objections, possibilities. “I can’t pay you,” you offer after a moment. “I have nothing left.”

“You’re a medic, right?”

Blood, bone, bandages. The sound of blaster fire on a battlefield. A red sun rising. Green peeking through the bloodied brown of the dirt, growing towards the light. Crying babies, smiling old women with missing teeth, laughing children with their mouths full. These things you remember.

“They called me - a medicine woman,” you say softly. “I helped things heal. I helped things grow.”

Mando nods to the devastated garden. “So gather your seeds, and let’s go.”

You stare at him for a long moment, and he shifts, moving his weight from foot to foot. You can’t tell, but you think he seems - _uncomfortable_ , for a moment, and then it’s gone beneath the self-assured cock of his hips and the upward lift of his helm. 

“Come on. Before your friends come back.”

Despite the fact it’s been some hours since your last bacta treatment, you feel that untethered feeling coming back, like you’re floating free from the threads of reality, cut free from your old life. Before you is uncertainty, a future unknown - but it’s better than one scraped together out of the grime and mud. 

Maybe it’s time.

“Okay,” you whisper, staring blankly at the ground, wondering what you were doing.

Right. Seeds.

You find a large, cracked ceramic bowl that will do to hold soil and whatever else you can salvage, and you begin to gather what you can. There’s not much, a few bulbs here, a pod or two there, but it’s enough. It will have to be.

You’re digging your fingers through the dirt near the outer edge of what was once your garden when you hear it. A soft, thin sound, little more than a pathetic, scared mewl. Your head whips up and you turn towards it - Mando is already there, blaster outstretched, pointing into the trees.

“Wait!” You hold up a hand as you stand, hearing a soft, familiar growl. Can it be…?

You approach slowly, hand outstretched in front of you. “Mister Nubbins?” 

“Mister... _Nubbins_ …?” Mando repeats slowly behind you, and you shush him quickly.

A pair of iridescent eyes catch the light, and you finally see the source of the sound, crouched and trembling by a bush, orange fur streaked black by soot. You cry out in surprise and joy, crouching down and holding out your arms. 

Slowly, the Tooka cat emerges, fur standing on end and wide mouth split to bare rows of thick, blunt teeth, ears flattened back to his skull. His three-toed claws paw gingerly at the dirt, and you click your tongue, watching as his ears perk in response to the familiar sound.

“Come here. Come here, boy. It’s _me_.”

The cat lets out a yowl and charges, nearly knocking you over with the force with which he leaps into your arms. His stubby claws are on your chest, digging in painfully to your healing flesh, but you don’t care; you laugh with abandon as he nuzzles your face and runs a long rough, barbed tongue across your cheek, purring as loud as you’ve ever heard him.

“Oh, I thought you were gone, too,” you sob, heedless of the fresh tears on your cheeks that the cat licks away. “Oh, Mister Nubbins.”

“That... _thing_ is yours?” Mando asks as you rise to your feet, cradling the animal to your chest. You nod, smiling so wide it hurts.

The Mandalorian sighs. “I don’t have any room for pets on my ship,” he says, but you think he doesn’t sound very convincing. You lift your chin and your shoulders defiantly.

“Then you don’t have room for a medic, either.”

The visor regards you and Mister Nubbins for a long moment. Then he sighs, deeply, hanging his head and shaking it in resignation. You don’t need him to remove his helmet to guess his expression. 

Defeated, the Mandalorian turns and jerks an arm in a gesture for you to follow.

“Come on.”

You allow yourself the briefest smile before you set off, nursing the small spark of hope that flickers in your chest as you trail Mando back to his ship with your furry companion nestled safely in your arms.

Some things are worth salvaging, you think.


	5. The Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You accompany the Mandalorian back to his ship and begin to settle in. 
> 
> Your world has tilted so much that the deck no longer feels uneven beneath your feet, even as everything you know continues to shift and turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter to keep the Plot marching on! I hope y'all enjoy regardless. I made this for YOU. Yes, YOU. 💝

“How far is the next village?”

Mando asks you this as you’re walking back to the ship. He leads the way and you trail behind, almost struggling to keep up, but not badly enough to warrant asking him to slow. You’re serene, even if it is temporary, your mood buoyed by the safe return of Mister Nubbins, despite the way the too-large boots chafe against your toes and heels with each step, despite the renewed tingling in your still-healing skin.

You consider a moment. “By packbeast, half a day. On foot, a week or more.”

“Packbeast? No speeders, repulsor carts?” He is incredulous.

You chuckle. “No. There’s not much technology here. People think it’s like magic.” 

“Not you,” the Mandalorian points out, turning his helmet to his shoulder in a brief glance in your direction without ever slowing his stride.

“Like I said. I’m not from around here.”

You expect him to ask for clarification, but he doesn’t. Not directly. Not straight away.

“You know how to use a cauterizer? Hypos? A bioscanner?”

You hesitate, shrugging, and wince as the movement shifts Nubbins in your arm and he digs his stubby claws into the shiny, thinner skin. You adjust his position so that his paws are pressed to your padded chest instead, and tuck the bowl full of dirt and seeds closer under your other arm. Your muscles there and in your legs ache, unused to all the walking after what must have been days of slipping in and out of consciousness. You consider asking Mando how long you were out for, but you’re a little afraid of the answer.

“I used to,” you settle on, eventually. “A long time ago.” Although in the grand scheme of things, ten years really isn’t that long.

You think it’s been ten years - maybe closer to twelve or thirteen, going by this planet’s rotation. It feels like forever. It feels like another life, lost to the gray fade of time and memories you push away if they dare to surface.

“Good,” Mando says. He seems to notice you struggling - he stops, turning to gesture at the container of dirt. “Here. Give me that.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to take Mister Nubbins instead?” you ask, as innocently as you can manage, but you find it hard to hide the smirk as you look up at the armored hunter through the lowered fringe of your lashes. 

If a helmet could frown, this one would. He yanks the bowl of dirt from you and resumes walking without saying anything. You stifle a chuckle behind your lips, pressing them together tight. 

You arrive back at the ship at around noonday, just as the planet’s yellow-orange sun reaches its zenith. Mando has chosen a barren fell bounded by heath on one side and a sparse copse of trees on the other - defensible, and flat enough to land easily in the thin undergrowth. This side of the planet is dominated by thick forests that the locals have failed to beat back, and the open spaces are hard to come by, few and far between.

“I liked it here once,” you murmur, waiting as he lowers the ramp with a tap of a finger on his metal vambrace. “This place. It was nice.”

You don’t expect him to address the comment, but again he surprises you as he shoots a look over his pauldron. “What changed?”

You don’t need to think about your answer; it comes all too easily: “The people.”

The Mandalorian regards you for a moment, silent, a world of possibility behind the unchanging blankness of his visor. Then he nods, as if he understands, and turns away to carry your earth and seeds up into his ship.

And, as if drawn by a magnet or the pull of a dying star, you follow.

\---

The Tooka had been content in your arms for the whole walk, but as soon as you’re inside the ship he is a squirming ball of fur and claws, fighting to escape your grip. You’re too tired, weak and sore to keep hold of him; you drop him to the deck and he darts off as an orange streak, disappearing behind a pile of crates.

“That _creature_ better not damage anything,” Mando says, pointing a gloved finger at you. “Or I’ll throw it out the airlock.”

“Then you’ll have to throw me out, too,” you say obstinately. The finger lowers, and he hands you your bowl of dirt. You look down at it, at the pathetic remainder of your old life, at the small green hints of what was once the horizon of your existence.

It feels small, insignificant now. You feel small. You wonder if anything you did mattered, in the end. You are both glad and saddened that you may never know.

“I’ll need somewhere to store these,” you murmur, running your fingers through the soil. It’s still damp, and its rich, peaty smell is familiar, cutting through the grease and oil and ozone of the ship. 

“I think this ship has a terrarium. This way.” Mando leads you deeper into the ship, towards the bow. 

“You _think_?” You repeat as you trail after him, ducking under a low hatchway. This area seems like it’s directly underneath the cockpit, and it holds a small, worn travel-couch, a table bolted to the floor, and a lighted recess in the wall which you think could indeed be repurposed into a functional terrarium. 

“Is this not your ship?” You toss him a glance of askance before you set your burden down and go to examine the terrarium. The lights are off, the wiring fragged, the moisture lines shot; it’s going to take some work to get it up and running again. It’s not the bedrock kind of agriculture that you have most recently been practicing, but you can probably manage it. Probably.

“Not really. Not for long. My old ship was...destroyed.” You pause, because you think you detect a hint of pain in his tone, a slight break in the regularity of the vocabulator that wasn’t there before. 

You don’t look at him, but you say “I’m sorry,” in a soft voice, and hope you haven’t miscalculated.

“Thank you.” Mando accepts your sympathy somewhat stiffly, but nonetheless, he accepts it. Then he heads towards the hatch. “I have something I need to do before I drop you off. Stay here.”

This time, you do twist towards him. “What? Where? There’s nothing _out_ here.” Except the village. You swallow the sudden lump of apprehension in your throat. He’s not going there to finish what he started...is he?

“Stay here,” he repeats, more firmly. “I’ll be back for you.” Despite his bulk, his ominous air, he manages _reassuring_ well. 

You think you should find him far more terrifying than you actually do.

Inhaling through your nose, you consider him for a moment. Then you nod.

After all, it’s not as if you have a _choice -_ but you appreciate him pretending that you do all the same. Even if it's just for a moment.

He nods back, two travelers who have reached an accord. As it should be.

He moves away, until - “Mando.”

You watch his shoulders tense with an unvoiced sigh. “What?”  
  
“Be careful.” The shoulders lift slightly, then lower. The sigh never comes.

“I always am.” 

And with that, he is gone, and you are alone.

Except for Mister Nubbins and your plants. As it should be. As it will never be again. Not for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _pfffffffffffffffffft_ "I'm always careful", says Din "Daily Concussion" Djarin, and we _laugh and laugh_


	6. The Intruder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone on his ship, you wait for the Mandalorian's return, but trouble finds you anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Violence, injury, mistreatment of an animal ( **Don't worry, Mister Nubbins is okay!** ), blood, medical stuff.
> 
> This chapter turned out slightly darker than I intended - but everyone is OK in the end, I promise!
> 
>   
> 

Mando doesn’t return in an hour, or two, or five. You wonder in the back of your mind if you should worry. He left the ramp open, and the implication is implicit - you can leave at any time.

You don’t, though. You wait. And soon enough, it doesn’t matter, for you are distracted, elbow-deep in wiring and tubing and dirt. 

At one point Mister Nubbins comes out of his hiding space and winds around your legs, purring; you pause to pat him, relieved that he seems back to his normal self. You rub his belly and under his chin until he falls asleep on the couch, mouth open, tongue lolling, and then you turn back to your work.

The terrarium proves harder to get up and running than you initially thought, or perhaps you just overestimated your technical abilities, which are rusty at best, almost entirely forgotten at worst. The first time you get water to flow through the moisture tubing you end up spraying it all over yourself. You’re just glad it’s not gray water.

Eventually, you have it up and sort-of-running, although the UV lights flicker and you’re not sure if the mister is going to be a deluge or a trickle. But you spread out a bed of dirt and nestle the first few precious seeds within, and it calms you, filling you with a sense of purpose, of connection to something outside yourself, something vast and alive. 

It has always been there, this other sense, a fleeting feeling like the thrum of blood through the veins of the universe. You know that there is more out there than space and stars, and you know the names for it - the Maker, the Gods, the Force - but you hesitate to attach meaning to something so mighty, something so immense that it transcends understanding itself. You simply allow yourself to experience it, a mote, a speck of dust in the eye of the galaxy, and you hope you are not destined to be blinked away.

When you are done, you become conscious of the fatigue in your limbs, of the stretch and burn of your skin that rises from unnoticed to unbearable all at once. You hiss and rub at your arms; they itch, and you know that means you’re healing, your natural processes taking over from the bacta, but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable. So you leave the terrarium and the sleeping Tooka cat and go in search of the last pouch of bacta gel, which you know Mando left in the refresher bay. 

You step out into the hold, and that’s when you hear it - bootsteps coming up the ramp. Mando is back.

“I got the terrarium up and running,” you begin conversationally, by way of greeting, as you head to meet him. “Mostly. But I’m feeling a bit sore, so I thought I might-”

Your words die in your throat, for the man standing at the top of the ramp looking at you is most definitely _not_ Mando.

He is perhaps the same height, bipedal, humanoid, and that’s where the similarities end. He’s human, you think, but it’s hard to tell under the beard and the wild snarl of hair that hangs over his desperate, wide eyes. He’s panting hard and sweating like he’s been running, and his clothes are torn as if by a frantic flight through the forest.

You freeze, a dugar-dugar caught in the floodlights, and stare at the man as he stares at you. You’re not sure who breaks out of the trance of shock and moves first, you or him, but he is faster - he reaches you before you can get away, and he grabs at you with dirty hands, one on your arm, the other clamping tight over your mouth.

“Don’t scream, and maybe I’ll let you off this ship alive before I steal it,” he snarls in your ear, and you shudder at the hot, wet stink of his breath on your skin. His grip on your shoulder is bruising, the thinner skin there splitting beneath the crushing strength of his fingers, and you feel warm blood oozing down the back of your arm.

You’re not sure if it’s the pain, the shock, the anger, but your first instinct is not to dissolve in tears, to beg, or to plead. You did that once, and they dragged you to the pyre, to your death. You won’t go quietly again.

So you bite down on the filthy hand that covers your mouth, and kick backwards as hard as you can with Mando’s heavy, oversized boot.

This awards you with a mouthful of blood and a sickening _crunch_ that makes the man howl with rage and pain. He lets you go, staggering back bent double and clutching his hand, and you spit and sputter as you scramble away, looking frantically for something to defend yourself with.

“You little _bitch_!” the man screams, straightening once he recovers from the initial surprise and hurt. You are not fast; you are exhausted and still tender from your wounds, but you are determined not to die here at the hands of this unknown assailant.

You survived the fire. You can survive this.

He pulls a knife from his belt, and suddenly you doubt yourself, but the adrenaline floods you with a shaky energy and strength. You grab a nearby crate and pull, tossing it down between you, but he vaults it easily as you circle back around and find yourself with your back to the refresher bay.

You throw whatever you can reach - a bar of soap, a medkit, even the pouch of bacta gel. The feral man bats it all aside with ease, advancing with his blade out in front of him, a snarl twisting his face into an ugly grimace.

“I’m gonna cut you,” he says, and you have nowhere to go, backing into the refresher bay as he looms ever closer. “I’m gonna cut you and make you hurt for that, _girl_ , and it won’t be quick. I’m going to keep you and use you until you wish I’d killed you right here and _then_ -”

Suddenly, he jerks forward, and you recoil trying to get out of reach of his blade. You’re confused as he yells and wheels around until you see the cause of the interruption and hear the snarling - Mister Nubbins is latched onto his back, clawing and biting, yowling and scratching as hard as he can.

“No!” you yell as the intruder attempts to get his knife into the feral Tooka. You lurch forward, heedless of your previous desire to get away, and grab onto the forearm of the hand holding the knife. You hang off him with all your weight, dragging him down as he yells and flails at the cat now clawing his face, drawing great bloody rents into his cheeks with the stubby claws.

The trespasser lands a glancing blow, and Mister Nubbins yowls and releases him, dropping to the deck with a terrible, soft _thud_. You shriek your horror, heedless of the knife hovering inches in front of your face as you kick and yank at the attacker, all sound and fury without the precision or strength of your previous blows. He grunts as he fights you off, holding you back one-handed, and then he raises the blade to strike -

The sound of the blaster shot fills the narrow space, loud and terrible in its finality, and you smell the familiar sickly-sweet stench of burning flesh an instant before the intruder goes limp and falls forward, crushing you to the deck underneath him. You collapse beneath him, reeling, and gaze past his ragged shoulder for what seems like an eternity before a helm of Beskar swims into your vision and you feel the weight being pulled roughly from you.

Then you realize that there’s words, someone’s speaking, not screaming or yelling - soft, urgent words on a high-pass filter through a vocabulator. The Mandalorian’s voice. The Mandalorian’s helmet above you, his visor a dark slash in the bright silver, the Mandalorian’s gloved hands on your shoulders, his fingers on your neck, feeling for your pulse.

“Girl. Girl. _Pyrrha._ Are you okay?” The words begin to make sense as the shock fades, and to your shame your body begins to shake; you feel sick, weak, and everything hurts even worse than before.

“Nubbins - “ you gasp as awareness sets in, and you don’t know where you get the strength to push Mando away from you but you do, crawling away across the deck to where you remember the furry body falling, away from the smoking bulk of the man who lies with a horrible, spine-deep black hole in his back.

The cat sits there, unconcerned, uninjured, as if nothing has happened at all. He is cleaning his paws, gazing at you through slitted, judgmental eyes, as if to say - _“What are_ you _l_ _ooking at?_ I’m _fine_.”

You laugh in relief, reaching out and pulling the feline into your lap. Perhaps sensing your emotional state, he doesn’t fight as much as you might expect him to. Instead he puts up with you sobbing and pressing your face into his fuzzy neck, soaking the soft fur with your tears. His deep, rumbling purr calms you, soothes the frantic beat of your heart, until the shaking subsides.

Behind you, you can hear Mando moving around, the sound of something heavy being dragged across the deck, and you imagine that the smell of death fades a little as the stranger’s body is taken away. When you lift your head again, the Mandalorian is back, crouching at your side, a medkit in one hand and the bacta pouch in the other.

“You’re bleeding,” he tells you, nodding to your arm. You let go of Nubbins reluctantly, who has evidently had enough of your blubbering, for he slinks off with his tail swishing high in the air, still purring. Then you extend your arm to allow the Mandalorian to treat the wound.

“Who was he?” you croak, ignoring the sting of the rough leader and disinfectant on your abused skin. “That - man?”

“My bounty,” Mando says, his voice even through the filter. _Of course_ , you think to yourself. You picture the stranger’s wide, cold eyes and shudder. The eyes of a criminal. No - the eyes of a desperate man, looking for any escape. Mando pauses in dressing the wound, and you shake your head, motioning for him to continue.

He is as gentle with you as he is remorseless when he shoots. 

“He doubled back by the time I caught up to him. I thought I could beat him here. I was wrong.” Is it your imagination, or does he sound - slightly _contrite_ , under that frustratingly even tone of his? You don’t expect that. Nor do you expect his next words: “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

“It’s fine,” you rush to tell him, to reassure him. You don’t know why. “Don’t... don’t worry about it.” He finishes cleaning and dressing the marks on your arm, applying a bacta patch with a firm press of his palm on your skin. Beneath the pain, his touch is...comforting. Strangely so. 

“You want me to put the bacta gel on you?” he asks. “Your skin’s a little red.” You think of those hands gliding over more of your flesh, and you feel a flush start in your neck, for some reason. Maybe you’re still in shock from the attack. _It’s just medicine. What’s wrong with you?_

Despite the self-rebude, you shake your head. “No, it’s fine. I can do it.” He pauses for a second, and you think he’s examining your face from behind the visor - then, finally, he nods and presses the pack into your hand, helping you up with the other.

You’re still wobbly on your feet, and you hurt everywhere, but that’s nothing new. You glance towards where the body had fallen, seeing nothing, only an upended crate and the scattered objects you threw.

A question occurs to you, without a reason not to ask it, so you do. “Do you still get paid if he’s dead?”

The Mandalorian’s shrug is dispassionate, his tone casual, almost detached. “Not as much.” He turns away, and you stare at the back of his helmet for a moment before you shake yourself slightly and head towards the refresher, deep in thought.

The coldness in his voice is directly proportionate to the warmth of his touch, and you wonder why neither bother you quite as much as they should.


	7. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stay or go? The Mandalorian thinks you've made up your mind, but what you actually want to do ends up surprising him.
> 
> You think you surprise yourself a little with it, too.

The Mandalorian sighs as he heaves himself into the pilot’s seat of his borrowed ship and tweaks the controls. The engine hums to life, and the whole vessel creaks with unfamiliar sounds as it lifts from the forest floor. It soars above the treetops, low enough to stir the tips of the coniferous pines that populate this side of the planet. 

This particular journey has turned out to be - what’s the word - a _clusterfuck_ of epic proportions. All he has to show for the trip is a dead bounty and a half-dead girl in his hold. The credits he’s going to get for the former will barely cover fuel, and as for the latter...he doesn’t know what to do with you. _Or_ your furry companion.

Speak of the mythosaur - he can hear rustling behind him. Mando turns in his chair slightly and regards the beady, slitted eyes of the Tooka cat so ignominiously named _Mister Nubbins_. It stares at him from where it sits perched on one of the passenger’s seats and then slowly, deliberately, it lifts a hind leg and begins to lick itself.

“Shoo,” Mando offers. “Get.” The feline ignores him. Mando tries a couple of hissing noises that would have worked on a Massiff but fail to achieve any result whatever with the cat. 

He sighs and turns back to the controls, letting his thoughts drift away from the annoyingly pervasive sound of licking that fills the cabin.

He can’t help but feel a shred of admiration for the girl - for _you_. When he used you as bait he didn’t expect things to go the way they did, but you fought back against the quarry commendably. Admittedly, and he’d said as much, he hadn’t planned for you to actually get hurt, but he had underestimated his quarry’s speed. For the last time, Mando tells himself. He won’t risk it again. 

He won’t risk _you_ again.

The criminal came dangerously close to stealing his ship. To inflicting more permanent damage on you. Neither of which his conscience, or his pride will allow. Both possibilities fill him with a controlled rage, like the cooling hiss of melted Beskar. He’s not entirely sure where it comes from. It is the ghost of the feeling he has experienced only once before in his life, what seems like an age ago. A memory that stings to touch.

While you’re on his ship, you _will_ be protected. 

Now he just needs to tell _you_ that.

He won’t blame you, not really, if you decide not to stay after all. It makes things simpler for him if you leave. Nobody else to worry about, nobody to take care of, nobody to protect...just The Mandalorian, Din Djarin, a clan of one, making his way through the galaxy, alone.

He wonders when that began to sound less desirable than it should. When the idea of company became acceptable instead of a hindrance. He’s hesitant to pinpoint a time, but things have shifted within him, the parameters for which he’ll tolerate a burned, broken girl, the lengths he would go to protect you...

It’s new. And he’s not sure he likes it.

But a little part of him hopes that he’ll get a chance to figure it out.

\---

You feel far better after standing for twenty minutes beneath the sanisteam, the temperature turned way down, than you have in days. The stream of cool water washes away the grime on your skin and the ache in your bones in equal measure, soothing the sting of the healing burns. You emerge pink and cleansed, and you stand in front of the refresher’s small mirror as you apply the bacta gel where it hurts the most.

Oddly, your own two hands do not feel as soothing as the Mandalorian’s rough, gloved touch, and you try not to think about that as you slather the cool, thick substance on your arms, your chest, your leg. It sinks in slowly, the tingling prickle of regenerating cells chasing away the burning itch. It even works for the marks on the back of your arm, the reminder of the most recent struggle for your life.

You try not to think of the criminal’s wild, frantic eyes, the stench of his breath on your neck, the glint of his blade plunging towards you. You wonder what he did to end up in the Mandalorian’s crosshairs and decide you’re glad, terribly glad, that you’ll never have to find out.

You dress in the tattered remains of your skirt, Mando’s borrowed shirt and boots, and slick your damp, ragged hair back behind your ears as you emerge from the refresher bay. The ship hums around you, the distant rumble of the engines muted to a soft buzz by layers of bulkheads, panels and hull.

You could just stay below, in the hold or with the terrarium, but curiosity gets the better of you. You end up heading towards the bow of the ship, and you’re surprised when you find the hatch that leads to the cockpit open.

Inside, you’re even more surprised to see Mister Nubbins curled up on one of the passenger seats, fast asleep with a snoring purr that vibrates his whiskers. At the fore, in front of the controls, the Mandalorian sits, the back of his helmet as inscrutable as the front as he guides the ship over the treetops.

From up here, the snarled canopy is a brown-green blur, the forest blending and rippling like an ocean. It fills you with a sense of vertigo, and suddenly you miss the feel of the earth beneath your feet, between your fingers. It’s been so long since you’ve been off the ground.

You’re dizzy before you know it, and you reach out, grabbing onto the back of the Mandalorian’s chair. He turns his head to regard you through the visor, and you’re not quite sure if he’s surprised or annoyed by your presence until he speaks, and his voice signals neither.

“You okay?” Concern. Again. It’s disconcerting, throwing you off balance more than the lack of ground is. You draw a deep breath and maneuver over to the remaining seat, sinking down slowly to perch on its edge. Your fingers fist in the soot-smeared fabric of your skirt as you fight to control your breathing, looking away from the blur beyond the transparisteel viewports.

“Just a little vertigo. It’s been a while since I was on a ship.”

“Mmhm.” Now Mando’s back to disinterested, returning to the controls. His gloved hands guide the ship with an expert touch, yellow leather creaking as he adjusts the pitch and yaw and keeps the horizon level.

“How long ‘til we reach the town?” you ask, and you wonder at the trepidation in your own tone. You’re scared, you realize. You have no idea what the future holds, whether the next town over will be a refuge or just another place to run from. More mistrust, more dark stares and hidden whispers, people condemning what they don’t understand.

You wonder if you will ever feel safe again.

“Not long,” Mando says. His head moves, and the visor tilts askance at you briefly. “Do you know anyone there?”

“No.”

“Do you have somewhere to stay when we get there?”

“No.” You shrug.

“Do you have any credits? Money?”

“No…but I can sell some of the seedlings I rescued.”

“What about him?” Mando nods at Nubbins’ sleeping, curled-up form. “He looks healthy. Some good eating on him, might be able to sell him to a butcher-”

“No!” you gasp, nearly recoiling in horror. “ _Sell Mister Nubbins? Eat_ him? Are you insane?”

The sound he makes is unfamiliar, and you struggle to place it for a moment before you realize what it is: A chuckle. The Mandalorian is _laughing_ at you. He was _joking_. You’re so relieved you manage to crack a smile, even as you shake your head.

“I can help you with the credits,” he says after a moment’s surprisingly companionable silence. “After that, though…”

“No, it’s okay,” you insist stiffly. “You’ve helped me...more than you should.”

“I shouldn’t have helped?” This time, he turns and holds your gaze with the visor for more than just a moment. “I should have left you there to burn?” He almost sounds... _indignant_ , like you’ve insulted him, his honor, by suggesting it. 

You balk a little at his tone. “No, I just- I don’t know how to thank you,” you stammer, suddenly nervous, without knowing why.

Mando releases you from his stare. “Don’t get yourself set on fire again,” he says, and you can tell by the way his grip on the joystick and throttle loses some of its tension that he’s relaxed again, that odd flash of - something - gone. “That will be thanks enough.”

“I’ll try,” you say, with a small, hidden smile. “No promises, though. On a planet like this, anyone who uses something other than wishful thinking to heal is usually looked upon with suspicion.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

You go silent with the way he just comes out and _says_ it - as if it’s a possibility entirely open to you. As if you haven’t slammed shut every other door, burned every bridge, kicked dirt over every trail you left behind.

But how is he to know?

"I would go with you?" you ask, just to clarify. "As your healer, your - your medic?"

"Yes. If your skills go beyond just wishful thinking."

“They do,” you say, and he nods.

"Well, then. Stay or go. It's up to you." And he turns away back towards the viewports.

“I’ll think about it,” you say. And you do.

You’re fairly certain that you already know your answer.

\---

The market is bustling, busier than the one in your village has ever been. The stalls here are more numerous, more colorful, the wares themselves of a wider variety than you’ve seen in years. You could spend hours looking at the flowers and seeds of one, or the medicines and unguents of another, but not today.

Today, you have company.

The Mandalorian looms at your shoulder, an unknowable monolith of silver, drawing eyes with every step. He seems oblivious to it, but you notice the helmet is constantly, subtly moving, the darkness of the visor taking in every element of your surroundings.

You clutch the bundle of newly-purchased clothes under your arm, glancing again at your escort. He insisted on buying your clothes rather than letting you barter your hard-won seedlings for them. And he still hasn’t pressed you about his offer. Not once.

You’re glad for his presence, though. You think you probably feel safer with him than without him, even despite the stares. These stares he can do something about, if need be.

“Got everything you need?” he asks as you crane your neck to eye off a stall selling herbs and incense. Reluctantly, you nod, and he leads the way out of the market. Back towards the ship.

The presence of such a vessel on the planet is enough to draw eyes, so he landed well out of the way, in a clearing by a dell and a gently flowing creek bed an hour’s walk from town. You’re not sure you can survive another trek in the Mandalorian’s oversized shoes, though, so once you’ve left the town proper you gesture for him to stop.

“Don’t look,” you tell him, ducking behind a tree, “I’m getting changed.”

“It can’t wait-?” he begins, but stops when he catches a discarded boot to the chest. He sighs. “Fine.”

The blouse is of a soft, billowy material that sits lightly on your skin - perfect not to irritate the healing burns. It’s a little translucent, the shape of your flesh semi-visible beneath the dark, diaphanous fabric, but you don’t care. Comfort is paramount right now, and you can always fashion it into something more modest later. 

It’s a relief to shuck the skirt in favor of a pair of breeches that reach to your knee, affording comfort and freedom of movement both. The new boots fit much better and feel surprisingly well-made. On the whole, the garments must have cost Mando a fortune, and yet he’d handed over the credits like it was nothing.

You wonder how much you’ll end up owing him by the time you part ways.

You emerge from behind the tree, handing Mando back his other boot and the borrowed vest. He stuffs them into a bag at his hip, but the helmet is oddly still, fixated on you, his visor reflecting the fading sunlight as it catches your hair.

“What?” you ask, looking down at yourself. “It fits, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” he says, and nothing more. He just looks at you for a moment longer then turns and continues the march back towards the ship.

 _Mandalorians_ , you think, shaking your head as you follow.

\---

The ship seems to dwarf the forest around it, making hundred-year-old tree trunks look like kindling. Its nose casts a long shadow over the land, a shadow that lengthens as the planet’s night approaches, yet again.

Mando lowers the ramp with a touch of a button on his vambrace. At the bottom, you pause, and he looks at you for a long moment.

“It would be dangerous if you came with me,” he says.

“Staying’s going to be just as dangerous,” You point out.

He draws a breath for a sigh. Is it just your imagination, but does he sound - regretful? “I can - I’ll give you some extra credits. Enough to get you started again.” 

“That’s very kind of you.” Your mind is made up, and you know he can tell. 

“I have a spare blaster you can take as well, to defend yourself,” Mando continues, too casually, too quickly. Deliberately not caring, one way or another. “I’ll go get it.” He turns and plods up the ramp, his footsteps heavier than usual.

You look up as the slow sunset paints the horizon in streaks of orange-red, casting the forests below in a layer of golden glow. Like this, it looks beautiful - but you have seen the shadows when the sun passes, and you know all too well the darkness in the hearts of those who live in its night.

You look higher, above the horizon, at the stars beginning to peek through the firmament as the orange-red blends to purple. You don’t know what lies out there for you if you leave. You know only what lies here for you if you stay.

And you know which you’d prefer.

Mando comes down the ramp with Mister Nubbins squirming under one arm, trying to scratch a hole into his Beskar breastplate and not letting his lack of success deter the stubby claws. “Don’t forget this,” he says as he hands the angry ball of fur over. The Tooka calms once he’s in your arms and outdoors again; his ears perk and he sniffs the air curiously.

“I don’t know,” you muse thoughtfully, stroking the cat’s head, not quite looking at Mando straight-on. “I think Mister Nubbins likes you. And your ship.”

If you could see behind the helmet you wonder what expression Mando would have on his face. He’s frozen, almost comically so, staring at you as if you’ve just hit him with a stun bolt.Then, slowly, he shakes his head.

“But...You said…”

“I _said_ staying is just as dangerous,” you tell him. “I didn’t say I wanted to stay. I want to go with you.” You’re not sure, but so you see him _flinch_ , just a little, when you say that? “If you haven’t changed your mind about your offer, of course.”

For a while - for far too long - he just looks at you, studying you from beneath a curtain of Beskar. Then he sighs, his shoulders slumping with it, and you’re not sure how much of it is resignation and how much is - something else.

 _Please_ , you pray silently, to the Maker, to the Unknown Gods, to the Stars and the Force itself. _Don’t make him change his mind._

When he speaks, it’s with the thoughtful tone of self-justification. “I _did_ say I could use a healer.”

“You did."

“Someone to have a medkit ready when I bring in the bounties.”

“Yes.”

“Not permanently,” he adds, emphasizing with a gloved finger pointed at you, even as you smile. “Just for the next few jobs.”

“The next few jobs,” you agree, nodding. “And then we’re even.” You adjust Nubbins to lay over your shoulder and hold out your hand to the Mandalorian. He looks at it for a moment before reaching out to shake. 

His grip is firm, rough from the leather. And warm.

“It’s a deal,” he says. And then he lets go, and you feel the loss of his hand far more keenly than you should.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he says, heading back up the ramp.

You remain for just a moment longer, looking around you. At the flowing water, at the earth beneath your feet, the forests bounding you, the sky reaching down from above, beckoning you upward. And you nod. 

“Right behind you.”

Nubbins in hand, you follow Mando up the ramp and into the ship, leaving this soil, this ground, this planet behind you for the very last time.

**Author's Note:**

> I do be on [tumblr](http://omgreally.tumblr.com), come say hi or just enjoy the mando and pedro pascal memes and reblogs.


End file.
